John Boehner blasts Barack Obama on trade

House Speaker John Boehner jabbed at President Barack Obama on trade policy Thursday, accusing the president of doing too little to get his own party to clear the way for a pair of blockbuster deals that Republicans already support.

The Ohio Republican highlighted a split between the White House, which is pushing for legislative authority to fast-track the Pacific Rim and European trade deals through Congress without amendments, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who said he doesn’t want that legislation to advance in the Senate.

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PHOTOS: House Republican retreat

“We cannot pass this bill without his help,” Boehner said of Obama at the House GOP’s annual retreat in Cambridge, Md. “And if this is one of his own priorities, you would think that he would have the Senate majority leader working with him to pass trade promotion authority in order to expand opportunities for our fellow citizens.”

The rift on the left has handed Boehner a golden political opportunity: All at once, he is able to endorse Obama’s policy position as similar to his own, but lambast the president’s ability to carry it out and accuse congressional Democrats of recalcitrance.

Other Republicans took swipes at Obama too. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California said the president ought to use his “phone and pen” strategy – his insistence on executive action in the place of congressional stalemate – to lobby his own party.

“I think the first phone call actually has to be to Harry Reid to talk about trade,” McCarthy said.

Reid’s calculation appears to be that Democrats have little to gain by angering a liberal base that vehemently opposes Obama’s trade efforts, especially ahead of a midterm election in which the party’s control of the Senate is on the line.

The Democratic split has imperiled two massive free trade agreements – the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an economic underpinning of Obama’s strategic “pivot to Asia” that would link the United States to Japan and 10 other Pacific Rim countries, and a deal with the European Union aimed at reducing transatlantic regulatory differences.

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has long argued that the fast-track authority is crucial because other countries won’t make the concessions necessary to complete those pacts unless they’re sure Congress won’t later try to change the terms.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that Reid’s position came as no surprise, and that the Obama administration will continue to press for fast-track authority.

“As the president said in the State of the Union address, he will continue to work to enact bipartisan trade promotion authority to protect our workers and environment and to open markets to new goods stamped ‘Made in the U.S.A,’” Carney said. “We will not cede this important opportunity for American workers and businesses to our competitors.”

However, it’s not clear that a path forward exists for the measure in the Senate.

Trade bills are tackled first by the Senate Finance Committee. The panel’s chairman, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), had joined with its ranking member, Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) in sponsoring the legislation. But Baucus will soon depart to become ambassador to China, and said Thursday, “I’ve moved it as far as I can.”

His replacement as chairman, Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), said he anticipates overhauling the bill.

“Global commerce has changed dramatically since the last time TPA was authorized, and senators are telling me they want the chance to examine those changes and have an opportunity to weigh in on a variety of issues,” Wyden said in an email to POLITICO.

It’s not clear when those changes would be made – and any major additions, such as the reauthorization of a program to provide retraining for workers displaced by trade deals, could complicate passage of the bill by causing at least some Republicans to turn against it.

Even if Wyden is able to cobble together a measure that liberals can back, by then it will be too late to stop Republicans from using the issue as a political hammer against Obama and Senate Democrats.

“Sen. Reid’s comments show how weak the White House outreach has been – they can’t even get their top Senate Democrat on board,” a GOP aide said. “Democrat resistance to TPA is just another refusal to take up legislation that would help create jobs and increase wages.”